# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S122
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

120 Report of Board for Higher Education

Springfield would mean that Springfield candidates would complete
a longer course than the combined Preparatory School-St. Louis
Seminary curriculum. There would be four years of high school,
three or four years of college, and three years of theological
training, exclusive of the vicarage year.

b) Although the transformation of a program of two high-
school years and two college years into a program of a three or,
eventually, four college years may not appear, on the surface, to
present serious problems, it would actually effect a complete change
in the character of the institution in Springfield. Originally
Springfield provided two or three proseminary years on the high-
school level and three years of theological study. Now the Spring-
field faculty requests the elimination of all high-school work and
the addition of at least one year of college work at this time.
It should be pointed out that under this arrangement Springfield’s
growth into a senior college would be a natural development
which Synod should clearly foresee and consider.

Your Board believes that this change is basic and introduces
an entirely new type of institution into our system of ministerial
training. Your Board is not simply concerned with the novelty
of this plan. It is concerned especially with its educational and
financial implications.

In the first place, the entire content of the college curriculum
preceding the theological studies would require careful planning
and organization along lines with which our Synod has had no
parallel experience in ministerial training. In the second place,
its relationship to the general pattern of American four-year
college education could not be disregarded. To a considerable
extent, standards of professional judgment now would need to
consider two faculties, one for the college division and one for
the three-year theological division. If individual members of the
faculty were to divide their time between college teaching and
theological teaching, serious questions of competence might arise.
In the third place, a reasonably effective college curriculum could
not achieve its educational aims without a considerable amplifica~
tion of laboratory and library facilities,

There can be little doubt that the financial needs of Springfield
would increase markedly over a period of years. The high-school
graduates whom Springfield would serve under the proposed
arrangement could be accommodated at a far smaller cost to
Synod in our preparatory schools.

c) If Concordia Seminary, Springfield, continues to offer three
or four years of college work, it will be possible for a student who
is considering the holy ministry to stay at a local high school for
four years and then go to Springfield. It is entirely possible: that